


Bottles

by TheHomestuckWhovian



Series: Bottles [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Minor Character Death, it's not really that graphic but the warning is there just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 12:12:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9490508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHomestuckWhovian/pseuds/TheHomestuckWhovian
Summary: Every year, since Keith was five, he'd go to the ocean and set a bottle afloat with a note inside, asking for help.





	

A tiny boy stood at the shore, waves washing up against his feet before retreating back into the sea.

In his hands was a green bottle with a red wax seal. Inside was a piece of parchment.

The little boy walked into the waves, going until he was thigh deep before setting the bottle in the water, letting it float away.

"Come on Keith!"

The little boy looked back at the teenager and quickly sloshed back onto the beach.

* * *

Keith grew up knowing the horrors in Pyros.

His adoptive brother, Shiro, lost his father in the war that Pyros lost against Galra, three years before Keith was born. His mother was killed attacking a Galran soldier who was beating a child to death for stealing a loaf of bread. Keith remembered that. He'd been four years old.

Shiro and his mother had taken him in the year before, when they found him crying and begging his dead father to wake up. Shiro's mother, an artist, drew his face before they buried him, to make sure Keith never forgot what he looked like. That picture was hung in the little kitchen.

His father wasn't Galran, but Keith had traits that indicated his mother was. His thick hair and dark violet eyes were Galran traits.

A few months after Keith was taken in, Shiro's mother received a letter. From then on, she never had to pay for the house. It didn't take much to guess that Keith's mother had agreed to pay for it in return for his upbringing.

When Shiro's mother died, Shiro, only twelve years old, was now in charge. It was scary, but he worked hard to take care of Keith. He'd work nights so Keith wouldn't be alone during the day. He taught himself how to cook and clean and take care of the house, so well that he earned a job cleaning at a nobleman's house for eight hours every night.

Both children were exposed to the horrors of Galran occupation of Pyros. It was Keith's idea to call for help with the bottles.

A note asking for help, sealed in a bottle and sent afloat to be found by someone who could help. It was a stretch, but it was the only thing two children with no status could do.

* * *

A six-year-old Keith returned from placing the bottle in the water to find Shiro asleep on his chair.

Keith, not wanting to wake his brother, simply climbed on his lap and curled up against him.

"We'll get out of here someday."

* * *

"Happy Birthday Shiro!"

Shiro blinked, mumbling, "Whashappening?" before seeing his grinning nine year old brother on his bed, holding a plate with a runny egg and slightly burnt toast.

"Breakfast?"

"The guy you work for said you get today off since it is your seventeenth birthday!" Keith explained. "So we get to have fun today!"

He set the plate down and ran downstairs to get Shiro's present, missing the loom of dread on his brother's face.

* * *

All day, Shiro looked out the window, as if waiting for someone to come. They never did, not as he opened Keith's present, a pocket knife he had paid for by doing chores at neighbors' houses. Not when he and his brother played chess and the games went on forever due to Shiro's distraction and Keith's attempts to let Shiro win. Not even when neighbors brought over dinner and a cake, each one also looking cautiously out the window when they visited.

It was a good birthday.

As Keith slept after the excitement of the day, Shiro sighed with relief. She must have known that Keith would be alone if Shiro was taken, too young to fend for himself.

He was safe until she decided Keith was old enough to take care of himself.

* * *

Another bottle sent afloat. Another year with no rescue.

"Is there a point?" Keith asked Shiro, ten years old and beginning to doubt.

"Someday they'll come help," Shiro promised, patting his brother on the shoulder. "We'll be free."

* * *

Keith had nightmares about Shiro's mother dying.

He remembered her enraged look becoming shock as she looked at the arrow sticking out of her chest before falling to the ground, dead.

The child she had saved died an hour later from their injuries. No parents claimed them, so he and Shiro buried them next to her. The two referred to them as their sibling when asked about the grave.

Their death had been slow and painful, one that haunted Keith as much as his father's and Shiro's mother's. They hadn't even been able to speak as they laid in her bed. Shiro hated being unable to save them.

Keith didn't remember much about his father. He only had two memories, one of receiving a knife that had apparently belonged to his mother, and the other of desperately trying to wake him up to no avail. His father's voice was a distant memory, and his name had been lost to time. Only his face remained, thanks to the drawing in the kitchen.

Death and the brothers were closely acquainted. Shiro had lost both parents, Keith had lost one, and both were unable to save the child Shiro's mother died to protect.

* * *

Seven years after the first bottle, Keith sent the story of Shiro's mother and the unnamed child afloat, evidence of the cruelty of Galra.

Shiro, in his twentieth year, promised Keith, "Someday."

"When?"

* * *

Thace, the Galran nobleman who Shiro worked for, was publicly executed when Keith was fifteen. He was accused of treason. They were forced to watch.

In his last words, he looked Keith in the eyes for a moment with a smile and declared the Galra Empire would fall.

Twenty-three year old Shiro went to look for another job. Their lives went on.

Yet Keith couldn't help but wonder why Thace had looked at him and smiled.

* * *

He told Thace's story that year in his note. He could almost feel his hopes drifting away with the bottle.

Shiro was asleep in the chair again, but Keith couldn't sit on his lap and promise him a future. He had become too jaded. The bottles were there as a crutch, to keep himself from falling completely hopeless to the ground and staying there.

He'd hold out for Shiro.

* * *

On Keith's seventeenth birthday, they took Shiro.

Keith was old enough to know that, at seventeen, boys were taken to fight for Galra's conquering efforts. He assumed Shiro had fallen between the cracks.

Now he knew the truth.

His mother had let Shiro stay until Keith was old enough, then let Galra have their way with him. Only Keith's safety mattered to her.

Keith hated her in that moment, for not protecting his brother.

He screamed curses in his house, hating himself for bringing misfortune to those he loved, and hating Galra for taking them away from him.

* * *

One last bottle.

He released it alone this year, no Shiro watching with a reassuring smile.

He told the story of his brother, of his promises and hopes. About how Galra took him, forcing him to fight for the country that killed his parents, taking him away from the only family he had left. About his choice, about how he had no more bottles to send.

On his back, Keith had a bag. Inside was food, extra clothing, the drawing of his father, and his mother's knife. He gave one last look to the bottle, floating into the distance, before turning away.

He couldn't rely on those who would never come. He couldn't rely on his mother, who never did anything to protect those he cared about. He'd have to fight the ones who took his family away himself.

Without looking back, he walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea I've had for a while.
> 
> It's undergone some changes, like the decision to make it a series, with the events in the following stories caused by receiving the messages Keith sent in those bottles. Thace was also originally going to be Keith's father, and Keith and Shiro were going to be half-brothers through their mother, but canon revelations led me to change that.
> 
> Keith's story is not over, and neither is Shiro's. Consider this a prologue, before the action. Who knows what will happen, or how they'll meet again. I'm still figuring it out!
> 
> I'll get to work on the sequel now. Later!


End file.
